mity88
Heya, im sorry if this is in the wrong thread! but idk where it should go! okay,so my church moved to a building thats +/-150m squared, it has no windows and a tiled floor,this causes a problem coz everything echoes! we dont have a band(yet) but we do play music and the pastor speaks with a mic...my problem is the echoing,we are getting a carpet,but it wont be that big,we are also getting some material drapes, would this stuff help?someone suggested cork sheeting on the rear wall,would that help? thanx guys!
Gearhead
Best thing is to get someone in who can model the space and let specialised software calculate it - if you hang drapes in the right places (often they use the ceiling) you can do a lot. If you can't find a specialist to do it for the budget, you can try damping the wall opposite the speakers. Plus everything else that faces back to the stage, even if only partly. The objective is to take out reflections that come back to the people speaking or playing, rather than trying to take out everything. The softer the surface, the more vibrations it takes out: a drape in front of a wall will act on both the incoming and returning waves. Cork may help, but not as much as foam.
mity88
Thank u for ur advice, its well appreciated!
AlanRatcliffe
The main thing is to break up the reflections between parallel surfaces - you don't need to make the room a padded cell - just enough to stop reflections from bouncing back and forth between two surfaces, so covering one wall makes a huge difference (or alternating panels on two surfaces). The longer distances are more important to treat than the short ones for echo, so the far wall at the back of the room is more important than the one behind the stage.
If it's a tall ceiling/roof, consider a suspended ceiling with some 2" or 4" thick fibreglass above it - that way the reflective floor isn't as crucial. If it's a vaulted roof this can be essential (as the roof concentrates the echoes back to a focal point below. Hanging sheets of rockwool every few metres in the roof space helps if you can't do the ceiling.
Otherwise, as much soft stuff as possible to drink up excess reverb. Heavy drapes (preferably velvet/velour with lining), soft furnishings and as much carpet with underfelt as you can get, etc.. Rockwool/rigid fibreglass is the best stuff to use - wrap sheets of it in speaker cloth (or even sackcloth) and either mount on wooden frames on the wall or just hang. Away from the wall and inch or two helps more as the sound passes through it twice- once as it travels to the wall and bounces back from it, through the absorber again. The more space between the wall and the absorption the lower the frequencies you'll kill.
Corners are great for catching bass as that's where you have three boundaries meeting - tube shaped absorbers are great broadband absorbers here. If you close off the corners with angled rigid fibreglass completely they work very well as bass traps too. The larger the room the more bass trapping you need generally as the room gets very boomy.
If you use acoustic foam (which isn't really recommended for a high traffic area like a church because it gets damaged easily) note that it's not normal foam that is used for sound absorption - it's open cell instead of the more common closed cell used for foam rubber mattresses, etc..
Cork is pretty reflective by itself - just takes of a tiny amount of highs. Virtually useless in this application.
While absorption is best, scattering the reflections can make a huge difference to delay time, breaking up flutter echoes between parallel surfaces. Cluttering up the room with lots of random things (like people ?) also helps hugely.
mity88
Thanks alan, yeah,we have realised that material seems to do the job very well, but ill try speak to the other guys and drop ur advice by them, thanks.
